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About ozyfrantz
Ozy Frantz is a student at a well-respected Hippie College in the United States. Zie bases most of zir life decisions on Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and identifies more closely with Pinkie Pie than is probably necessary. Ozy can be contacted at [email protected] or on Twitter as @ozyfrantz. Writing is presently Ozy's primary means of support, so to tip the blogger, click here.
I… really just want to help. I’m not the kind of person that you can present with a problem and expect me to just go “mhm that sucks.” Maybe it’s because I’m too much of a man (and if you missed how I spat that out, well, it makes me feel sick)… but I was raised that when a friend reaches an obstacle in something they want to do, well, you help them move around it. That’s what friends are for. Obviously I can’t pay for a year of school for you, I can’t even afford to go to school… Read more »
Having worked at Walmart, I can’t tell you how many times I watched people just walk out of the store with things while the “loss prevention” guys followed behind them pathetically going “Sir? (or Ma’am.) Excuse me, I need to ask you to come back here a moment.”
@Lamech: In general, societies in which people were not willing to use force in order to defend property ended up losing that property to invaders that were willng to use force in order to take it. (Colonialism, and all that.) As for the question of when it’s right or appropriate for an individual living within a society to use force in order to defend property and when such defense should be left to professional police and armies, that’s a slightly different question that’s a bit above my pay grade. 😉
@Lamech
There have been cases where employees were fired for thwarting robberies. Insurance firms and larger store chains usually don’t want their employees, security or otherwise to risk injury to either party in the hundreds of thousands for a hundred dollar Xbox.
Hey I have a question: What do people here think about using force to protect property? Is it okay for store security to stop someone from walking out with their stuff?
I know this is only tangentially related but talk about Islamic sexual norms reminded me of this book on gender performance in 19th century Iran: http://www.worldcat.org/title/women-with-mustaches-and-men-without-beards-gender-and-sexual-anxieties-of-iranian-modernity/oclc/56068805
Cool video, Gudenuf.
Catchy song too.
@Dvärghundspossen : Baptists view men and women as equals but want them to be sexually miserable. But on the other hand, viewing men as horndogs and women as passive asexual creatures who must guess when it’s OK to have sex because otherwise people think they are sluts is stupid – it’s like the discussions on Hookingupsmart. I think that both men and women have sexual needs and desires. @Engineer Krause : Interesting. Have heard the claim made that despite all the typical conservative stuff and repression and normativity and sexism, traditional islam (as opposed to the regressive extremist type popularized… Read more »
Interesting. Have heard the claim made that despite all the typical conservative stuff and repression and normativity and sexism, traditional islam (as opposed to the regressive extremist type popularized by the Taliban and imposed by Iran) is actually more sex-positive than the European-Christian and European-Ex-Christian cultures. I have also heard this about Orthodox Jewish culture. I don’t know if it is true. The case can be made for waiting for marriage / an eternal relationship before having sex or even becoming too vulnerable. Many men, socialized to want casual sex, learn this the hard way. However, I think that between… Read more »
When I was a teenager (in the nineties) I hung out with both religious people from the local Baptist church and non-religious “mainstream” people. Most of the baptists thought sex outside marriage was wrong, and wanted to wait until they got married. That went for men as well as women. The “mainstreamers” believed that it’s in men’s nature to always want sex and always ask for it, and then it’s up to the women to say “no” for a certain amount of time, and then eventually change that to “yes”. Say “yes” too soon and you’re a slut, wait too… Read more »
Does losing weight mean losing sensitivity?
http://dannyscorneroftheuniverse.blogspot.com/2012/04/does-losing-weight-mean-losing.html
Occupy Easter (and similar sentiments)
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/04/occupy-easter-and-similar-sentiments.html
And anyway, why would Superman go through all the trouble to use an oven when he can he just shoot his heat-rays at the cake and it’d be done in a matter of seconds.
Monkey: “Actually, I think more likely Lex Luthor is going to steal it.
And that’s terrible.”
Mind over muscle, Monkey. Mind over muscle.
Yeah, I heard about the findings of Giordano et al back in 2006. Whaddya know, boys are humans too – sadly a surprise for many women and men (who only have a selective memory colored by stereotypes and expectations of being boys), but not to boys themselves. The stereotype of the borderline sexual dangerous horn dog teenage boys/young men are so entrenched that I sadly suspect that this finding will just get buried/ignored in peoples’ minds this time around as well. Victory for the very feminist movement? The? The non-borg feminist movement? I’ll call it a victory for those young… Read more »
Did anyone see Saturday’s NYT editorial on teenage boys’ changing sexual behavior? It’s really interesting and (I think) quite positive. Here’s an excerpt: While American locker-room and popular culture portray boys as mere vessels of raging hormones, research into their private experiences paints a different picture. In a large-scale survey and interviews, reported in the American Sociological Review in 2006, the sociologist Peggy Giordano and her colleagues found teenage boys to be just as emotionally invested in their romantic relationships as girls. … Boys have long been under pressure to shed what the sociologist Laura Carpenter has called the “stigma… Read more »
“Too bad Superman doesn’t know that the cake’s a lie.”
Actually, I think more likely Lex Luthor is going to steal it.
And that’s terrible.
Well said, Dvärghundspossen.
This just heartbreaking… http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/us/welfare-limits-left-poor-adrift-as-recession-hit.html?_r=1&hp
@Dvärghundspossen: Bingo!
If we focused directly on health rather than weight we’d also stop glorifying thin but unhealthy people. As I said above, I’ve always been slim. Nowadays I’m slim and healthy (exercise and eat well), but I used to be slim and UNhealthy – no exercise, too much junk food and alcohol. Couldn’t run five hundred metres or I’d run out of breath. The thing is, if you’re slim and unhealthy people will ADMIRE you for it. They’ll think it’s AMAZING how you can eat the stuff you eat, not exercise and still be slim. So obviously I bragged about my… Read more »
@daelyte: Okay, I think I understand what you’re saying. Sorry, took some reading over to get up to speed.
@daelyte: Uh. So, I’m trying to make some sense of your post. You seem to have written some random thoughts, a few lists out of context, and your fathers profession. I agree? @L: I don’t have an exact definition for “overweight”. My point is that bodyweight is correlated with health risks, and for the vast majority of people, adopting healthy habits results in a reduction of adipose tissue. I certainly agree that the focus should be on health, not weight – but look at the stats for obesity rates vs diabetes rates vs heart disease rates, etc. As the number… Read more »
@suturexself: What’s your definition of “overweight”? That’s also a huge motivator for the movement. I’ve been normal to underweight my entire life and my dad still found it necessary to point out my “muffin tops” when I was growing up. To a disappointing number of people, anything bigger than a size 4 is “fat”. And does nobody pay attention to the number of ways that being too skinny is unhealthy, or does that not matter because it’s socially acceptable to have so little body fat that your menstrual cycle comes to a grinding halt? My husband’s overweight according to BMI,… Read more »
Apparently, the lad culture was defined during the late-’90s – and is associated with Britpop. It definitely existed in some form long before that, though. Rhett Butler was probably a proto-lad.
Not that the “knight” masculinity type can’t be just as patriarchal and misogynistic – but it almost seems as if the “beast” masculinity type is sort of a backlash against the feminist movement, coupled with the LGBT activism movement. The whole “rated m for manly” “testosterone poisoning” machismo is definitely much newer than people might think, even though it’s probably been around for over a century.